`IMAKA is an instrument concept for an extremely wide-field ground-layer adaptive optics on Maunakea, Hawaii. The instrument leverages Maunakea’s unique conditions: excellent seeing, weak free-atmosphere seeing, and its highly-confined boundary layer turbulence with a ground-layer adaptive optics system to deliver high-resolution images over fields of view of several tens of arcminutes. The `IMAKA concept could provide some of the finest wide-field images ever obtained from the ground and would do so over a field of view nearly an order of magnitude larger than other sites. The project is aptly named after the Hawaiian word `imaka meaning “scenic view”

The `IMAKA team completed a feasibility study for the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, conducted a number of on-sky measurements and experiments to characterize the nature of the optical turbulence near the ground and inside the domes and verify the level of performance GLAO can attain. We are now in the midst of designing and deploying a demonstrator GLAO system for the University of Hawaii 2.2-m telescope. We refer to this demonstrator as `imaka (just the word to distinguish it from the larger instrument we envisioned for CFHT).

optical imaging at a 0.3” resolution over a one degree field-of-view

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numner AST-1310706. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.